GOTCHA DAY
When the occasion arises to describe the family I grew up in my standard line is usually "There were seven of us; six girls and one boy - and we had to cheat to get him!"
That's right, after five little girls mom and dad were unwilling to roll the 'let Nature take its course' dice again and decided to adopt that little boy they wanted to round out their family. That little girl #6 came along shortly afterward can be chalked up to Mother Nature showing them who was really in charge of such matters. She has a great sense of humour, Mother Nature does.
I was only nine years old when we started hearing the word "adoption". Mom and dad had to go for meetings and they went to visit some people in town whose whole family was adopted, I imagine to talk to them about what to expect. From the fringes where I was observing all this, there was a lot to take in and as I remember it, by the way the grownups treated the word "adopted" it seemed that maybe this was something too far outside the box for our family. As an adult I now realize that this seriousness that my parents treated the process with was commitment, not anguish - although all parenting involves plenty of both.
I honestly couldn't tell you how long it took between when they applied and the day when they announced that they were off to Regina to pick up a little boy who was going to be our brother. I wonder? Did I believe that it was really happening? How did my school day go? I can't even recall if they were home before us, or the other way around, but I do remember how cute that dark-haired, brown-eyed boy was, and how all of his new sisters just fell in love with him.
On January 20, 1965 - his Gotcha day (the day we 'got' him) he was a chubby-faced. sturdy toddler with a little one-sided grin that we all marvelled was just like Elvis Presley's. That mom and dad had chosen a name for him that gave him the same initials (E.P.) seemed like Fate - he was just that darned cute. There were so many of us crowding in on him that it's a wonder he wasn't traumatised, maybe mom held us all back, but he had us figured as his own personal groupie section in no time at all. He was spoiled shamelessly.
Until, of course, that little sister #6 came along and he had to share the lime light.
For people who have no experience with adoption, who have never stretched their families in such a way, it's probably hard to understand how you can graft a new branch on the family tree and have it take so completely, but he is our brother; always has been, always will be.
With our gain though, it has to be acknowledged that someone else had to suffer his loss. I keep these unknown people - his mother especially - in the back of my mind. We know very little about them, but it's not the financial or social facts that matter anyway. It's the times that we've shared that they haven't. It's the sense of humour that they gave him but it's us who get to laugh with him (or at him, as the case may be). When his birthday rolls around do they stop and wonder where he is; I know I would if I were them.
I'm not sure which came first - the chicken, or the egg; are we the kind of people who are just open and therefore tend to adopt, or did my brother's adoption open a door for us making it an easy decision to go ahead and adopt again? Regardless, two of my eight grandchildren are adopted as well, and with the arrival of the last one came the concept of having a Gotcha day to celebrate when he joined the family.
It's such a lovely tradition and so simple an idea I don't know why we didn't think of it before. My brother is in his fifties now and as far as I can remember, has never had his big day acknowledged. That was changed this year when sister #6 planned dinner and a celebratory cake Friday night and the rest of us were there in spirit to celebrate too. We're still glad we "gotcha"!
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Sunday, January 15, 2017
A BOWL OF SOUP
The past two weeks have been a whirlwind. What would normally have been 'the dead of winter' with no activities and a lot of staying at home and keeping warm was anything but for the first two weeks of January.
The first mission of the year actually sent out a warning just before Christmas, but its message wasn't interpreted correctly. Our daughter and her husband are the recent new owners of an acreage about an hour's drive from here. It's 22 acres with a house, two barns, a workshop and a huge shed in a well treed yard; the perfect place to raise their growing family. It's wonderful to have that kind of space and control of what you want to do with it, as opposed to living in a city setting with architectural control and animal bylaws in place. Of course, there is a trade off for these freedoms: where as no one is going to tell you how to design your house or what kind of animals you can keep, when you have water and sewer problems - they are entirely your own problem to fix.
When their water pressure started giving them problems it was misdiagnosed to be a foot valve problem and that repair was made; it made no difference. Then came Christmas and then the blizzard and then the yard clearing which led to the discovery of a growing ice pond forming in their front yard - they obviously had a water line break between the well and the house. It was New Year's Eve and the next three days would be weekend and holiday - they needed to deduce where the break was, dig down to find it, repair the line, and properly re-bury the line so the frost couldn't get at it and freeze it solid.
On the good side they have their own backhoe to do the digging and our son works at a store that carried the plumbing pieces they would need so the holidays weren't going to stop them, on the other hand it was bitterly cold and if we were going to be able to help them it had to be right away - we had booked a week in Mexico and had to be gone to catch our flight by the morning of the 4th, at the latest.
The men gave it everything they had but the little backhoe just didn't have the power to get through the layer of frost. The break ended up being under where their driveway is and the more ground is compressed with traffic the deeper the frost layer gets. They finally had to call a neighbour to come with a bigger machine and six hours later it was dug up, fixed, and buried again - all for an inch long split in a plastic hose! We heard about this in a text about the time we were halfway to Calgary; it was good to know they had their water back.
The tropical holiday was lovely and warm, the beach and pool at the resort were great, we went with fun people and met more while we were there ... and I fought a cold the whole time. And just as I began to get better Glen came down with it. We were invited to stay longer and visit more when we got back to Canada but all we wanted by that time was to go home - besides, no one in their right mind would seriously want to share space with our germs.
I think we were in bed within an hour of getting home on Friday night.
And yesterday I got up and made soup. After all the tropical fruit, fresh fish dishes, and fancy cuisine we had all last week all either of us desired was a pot of hot, meal-worthy, vegetable-filled soup. Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home.
The past two weeks have been a whirlwind. What would normally have been 'the dead of winter' with no activities and a lot of staying at home and keeping warm was anything but for the first two weeks of January.
The first mission of the year actually sent out a warning just before Christmas, but its message wasn't interpreted correctly. Our daughter and her husband are the recent new owners of an acreage about an hour's drive from here. It's 22 acres with a house, two barns, a workshop and a huge shed in a well treed yard; the perfect place to raise their growing family. It's wonderful to have that kind of space and control of what you want to do with it, as opposed to living in a city setting with architectural control and animal bylaws in place. Of course, there is a trade off for these freedoms: where as no one is going to tell you how to design your house or what kind of animals you can keep, when you have water and sewer problems - they are entirely your own problem to fix.
When their water pressure started giving them problems it was misdiagnosed to be a foot valve problem and that repair was made; it made no difference. Then came Christmas and then the blizzard and then the yard clearing which led to the discovery of a growing ice pond forming in their front yard - they obviously had a water line break between the well and the house. It was New Year's Eve and the next three days would be weekend and holiday - they needed to deduce where the break was, dig down to find it, repair the line, and properly re-bury the line so the frost couldn't get at it and freeze it solid.
On the good side they have their own backhoe to do the digging and our son works at a store that carried the plumbing pieces they would need so the holidays weren't going to stop them, on the other hand it was bitterly cold and if we were going to be able to help them it had to be right away - we had booked a week in Mexico and had to be gone to catch our flight by the morning of the 4th, at the latest.
The men gave it everything they had but the little backhoe just didn't have the power to get through the layer of frost. The break ended up being under where their driveway is and the more ground is compressed with traffic the deeper the frost layer gets. They finally had to call a neighbour to come with a bigger machine and six hours later it was dug up, fixed, and buried again - all for an inch long split in a plastic hose! We heard about this in a text about the time we were halfway to Calgary; it was good to know they had their water back.
The tropical holiday was lovely and warm, the beach and pool at the resort were great, we went with fun people and met more while we were there ... and I fought a cold the whole time. And just as I began to get better Glen came down with it. We were invited to stay longer and visit more when we got back to Canada but all we wanted by that time was to go home - besides, no one in their right mind would seriously want to share space with our germs.
I think we were in bed within an hour of getting home on Friday night.
And yesterday I got up and made soup. After all the tropical fruit, fresh fish dishes, and fancy cuisine we had all last week all either of us desired was a pot of hot, meal-worthy, vegetable-filled soup. Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home.
Monday, January 2, 2017
WE'VE GOT THIS!
A person always wonders what the future holds as the final minutes of one year steadily tick forward into the first minutes of the next. We think about the year that has been and what we hope for as the next one unfolds, and being a superstitious bunch, we look for signs to calm our reservations with the unknown. It's always scary to step into something we can't predict.
This past year has been a doozey, hasn't it? News broadcasts are a never ending flow of stories that leave us at the very least unsettled, and at worst, deeply depressed. How can human beings think that blowing up other human beings serves any purpose at all? How can bombing whole cities into rubble and dust profit any kind of agenda? What is the point of declaring yourself the victor when there is nothing left to claim, and no people to rule?
Disturbingly I find myself becoming immune to the stories of terrorism attacks around the world. It's not a question of was there another one, but where did it happen today, with minor points of interest added like how many bombers there were, how many of them got away, and how many innocent shoppers or concert goers died this time. It has started sounding like a sports cast explaining who the opposing teams are, what plays were used, and what was the final score. What should shock us just ends up sounding like a bunch of statistics. I have to stop and remind myself every once in a while those numbers had mothers and fathers who loved them, children who depended on them, friends who were probably there and couldn't save them.
And no one will ever be able to think of 2016 without the nightmare of the USA presidential election results. If there ever was a reason to dread this next four years, it's the thought of who is in charge at the White House. My hope is that we manage to live through it; the world has never been in less trust-worthy hands.
But that is the big picture; something I can do nothing about. If I let myself worry about the world affairs I will certainly go crazy, so I focus on just my own little place on the map and my own little life. When the clock ticked into 2017 we were up at the neighbour's place toasting the New Year with loads of food, cups of cheer, and a box of fireworks set off amid snowflakes fluttering down around us. A half hour later we were on our way home, happy and tired. The roads hadn't been in great shape on our trip to the party and they had got worse. We ended up getting stuck a mile from home in the middle of the road because the drifts were so deep and went on for so long.
The obvious thought that this was a bad omen for the new year came to mind as we put on the extra hats, mitts, and scarves we had in the back seat, put the cell phone on flashlight mode and headed home, but that mile's worth of exercise gave me lots of time to think - yes getting stuck wasn't a good thing, but since we were prepared and confident in our abilities, it wasn't a serious obstacle.
The walk was brisk, but pretty, the tractor started right up even though it hadn't been plugged in, and we were changed into work clothes and headed back to the car in less that a half hour. We had the tools to dig out and Glen used the snow blower on the tractor to clear the whole road and our driveway before we called it a day. For me it wasn't about the misfortune of getting stuck, but that we were capable of overcoming the trouble all on our own.
Let's hope we can say the same thing about world affairs and American politics this time next year.
A person always wonders what the future holds as the final minutes of one year steadily tick forward into the first minutes of the next. We think about the year that has been and what we hope for as the next one unfolds, and being a superstitious bunch, we look for signs to calm our reservations with the unknown. It's always scary to step into something we can't predict.
This past year has been a doozey, hasn't it? News broadcasts are a never ending flow of stories that leave us at the very least unsettled, and at worst, deeply depressed. How can human beings think that blowing up other human beings serves any purpose at all? How can bombing whole cities into rubble and dust profit any kind of agenda? What is the point of declaring yourself the victor when there is nothing left to claim, and no people to rule?
Disturbingly I find myself becoming immune to the stories of terrorism attacks around the world. It's not a question of was there another one, but where did it happen today, with minor points of interest added like how many bombers there were, how many of them got away, and how many innocent shoppers or concert goers died this time. It has started sounding like a sports cast explaining who the opposing teams are, what plays were used, and what was the final score. What should shock us just ends up sounding like a bunch of statistics. I have to stop and remind myself every once in a while those numbers had mothers and fathers who loved them, children who depended on them, friends who were probably there and couldn't save them.
And no one will ever be able to think of 2016 without the nightmare of the USA presidential election results. If there ever was a reason to dread this next four years, it's the thought of who is in charge at the White House. My hope is that we manage to live through it; the world has never been in less trust-worthy hands.
But that is the big picture; something I can do nothing about. If I let myself worry about the world affairs I will certainly go crazy, so I focus on just my own little place on the map and my own little life. When the clock ticked into 2017 we were up at the neighbour's place toasting the New Year with loads of food, cups of cheer, and a box of fireworks set off amid snowflakes fluttering down around us. A half hour later we were on our way home, happy and tired. The roads hadn't been in great shape on our trip to the party and they had got worse. We ended up getting stuck a mile from home in the middle of the road because the drifts were so deep and went on for so long.
The obvious thought that this was a bad omen for the new year came to mind as we put on the extra hats, mitts, and scarves we had in the back seat, put the cell phone on flashlight mode and headed home, but that mile's worth of exercise gave me lots of time to think - yes getting stuck wasn't a good thing, but since we were prepared and confident in our abilities, it wasn't a serious obstacle.
The walk was brisk, but pretty, the tractor started right up even though it hadn't been plugged in, and we were changed into work clothes and headed back to the car in less that a half hour. We had the tools to dig out and Glen used the snow blower on the tractor to clear the whole road and our driveway before we called it a day. For me it wasn't about the misfortune of getting stuck, but that we were capable of overcoming the trouble all on our own.
Let's hope we can say the same thing about world affairs and American politics this time next year.
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